23.8.16

GOOGLE has pushed-out its latest operating system update – Android 7.0 Nougat – to Nexus smartphones and tablets, with other manufacturer's devices to follow in "the coming weeks".

Google has rolled-out the latest version of it hugely-successful mobile operating system.

Android 7.0 Nougat includes a new multi-window tool to view two apps side-by-side, improved battery life and wider encryption for personal data security among its new features.

Google previewed an early version of the software back in March.

With more ways to make Android your own, it's by far our sweetest release yet

Sameer Samat, Android

Nougat also expands its emoji library to over 1,500 and brings a redesigned notifications panel that lets users respond to text messages or update task lists directly from the dropdown interface.

A new Data Saver mode has also been added. This lets smartphone owners reduce cellular data use by apps.

With Data Saver enabled, the system blocks background data usage and signals apps to use less data in the foreground wherever possible – by limiting bit rate for streaming, reducing image quality, deferring optimistic pre-caching, and so on.

GOOGLE

Google has expanded the emoji library available to users by 1,500 new characters

Google's incredibly useful Doze feature, first introduced last year with Marshmallow, also gets a boost in 7.0 Nougat.

Doze uses the sensors baked into an Android phone to detect when the device is not being used and cuts power consumption, this year, the feature has been extended so that Doze can still identify when your phone is idle, even when moving around in a bag or your pocket.

Following the update to Android 7.0 Nougat, users can quickly jump between their two most recently used apps with a double-tap on the Overview button – the square icon on the left of the three virtual navigation buttons that appear along the bottom of the display.

Google has also focused on a number of under-the-bonnet security improvements.

GOOGLE

The notification shade gets a number of tweaks to speed-up your replies and access to settings

In Android Nougat each file and folder saved on the device is encrypted and protected individually, as opposed to being encrypted as a whole like previous iterations of the mobile operating system.

Direct Boot – another new feature of Nougat – takes advantage of this tweak to speed up the unlock time of a phone by starting to launch some apps securely even before an unlock code is entered, something that can't be done using device-based encryption as it performs a blanket lock of all files on the device.

Two apps can now run side-by-side on tablets and smartphones with Nougat [GOOGLE]